


Don't Want To Wash My Hands Clean

by kbvibes



Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Angst, Communication, Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6295942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbvibes/pseuds/kbvibes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Distance doesn't always make you distant. Sometimes it's the way you start to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Want To Wash My Hands Clean

**Author's Note:**

> Another short drabble I promised to post.
> 
> P.S. Nice haircut, Chris. 
> 
> Title from the song "[Go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPAeOlTvcmo)" by Hanson. (Are you seeing a theme here, kids?)

These calls have become a common enough occurrence that he can't bring himself to he surprised when the smiling face on the phone is Darren's. Every few weeks, never more than a month apart. It's kind of funny. The picture wasn't even taken on this cell phone. Either the last one he owned or the one before that. He's as much of a slave to getting the updated ones as anyone else. Don't tell anyone. 

Darren always liked to keep weird hours. He liked to show up at 6:15 in the morning with a box of sugary cereal that he hasn't had since he was a kid and say he's treating him to breakfast. He would decide that he wanted to go see a movie on a random Tuesday at ten. And now he likes to call at almost two in the morning. Too late for Chris to be up and too early for Darren to be. But somehow, they both always are.

"Hey."

"Hey, yourself."

It's the first sound of his voice that makes Chris close his eyes. It's a rich, deep sound that hits his nervous system like a jolt of caffeine. There was a time, not too long ago, that it didn't have this effect on him. Daily exposure diluted the effect and made it easier to push Darren into the background of his day. That's not how things are anymore. He feels the tingles now, like he did when they first began all of this. 

"Can't sleep?"

"Haven't tried yet." That's no surprise. Darren loves to go to bed with the sunrise, whenever circumstance and present company allow. Chris was the reason for that, once upon a time.

“I see.” He wishes he could. That he could see and know if Darren’s actually alone or simply the only one left awake. He’ll never ask. “So then I am the last resort for entertainment. That’s pretty sad.” 

A ragged sounding breath. “You’re not a last resort. You’re just the first person that I think of when things get… fucking quiet. You like the quiet.”

He’s right, he does. 

His mind is still whirring away, trying to decide how to best answer that when Darren stops him. “You’d like the New York version of quiet too. There’s never complete silence, but things are still kinda still and nobody’s out. Not in this neighborhood, at least. I can imagine you here.”

“Well, that’s good. That your imagination still works. Considering that we have been in New York together before.” He winces at the bite in his own voice. He doesn’t mean it. It’s just that Darren’s towing awfully close to a line that they don’t cross. Not out loud. 

“But I’ve never seen you _here_ here. I’ve never seen you in this apartment. I’ve never seen you walk down this street. We haven’t sat in the bar around the corner.”

Tooclosetooclosetooclose. Stop him. Stop him now. “So? We’ve never sat in a lot of bars together.”

“I know.” The words are a too soft hushed murmur that he nearly misses over the sound of his own frightened pulse in his ears. “Never done a lot of things.”

“So what’s your point here, Darren? Because I think I’m missing it.” He wants to kick himself for asking as soon as he does. He’s just inviting trouble now. 

“I just... can just see you in all those places. Fucking clearly. Every damn eyelash, what shirt you’re wearing, what you ordered to drink. I can smell you there. Sometimes I turn around to ask you something and until I do, I’ve forgotten that you’re not actually sitting beside me.” He pauses for a short breath. “That weird?”

No. “Yeah, sort of.”

“I don’t know if I’m seeing you as the real dude or if I’m just shaping you into something that I’m creating in my mind. That bugs me, ya know? Hey. You change anything in the past few months?”

That’s… an interesting question. Darren’s usually are. He doubts he’s asking about the new coat of paint downstairs or that fact that he’s hired on a different personal trainer.

“Not really. I’m still just me. I got a haircut today.”

“Yeah? Do anything any different with it?”

He should say yes. He should tell him that he has a buzz cut now. Maybe for a role. Something he hasn’t told him about. Or blue streaks. _Anything._

“Same as usual. Same place, my usual guy.”

“Good.”

“Is it? Some people would say that makes me predictable.”

“No, man. I think it’s awesome that you’re a creature of habit. It’s a fucking relief to have something to count on.”

He feels a white hot pang slice through him. He'd wanted to be that once, Darren’s thing to count on. He actually thought for a short time that he could be. But Darren’s world was a funhouse mirror and he found that he didn’t like his own reflection in it. It distorted too much of who he was. He himself needed to be a safe distance away from the lights and music of the carnival. That’s what this whole year has been about. 

Darren’s still the goddamn main attraction. Clowns and all. 

He doesn’t have the answers, so he tries a question. Safe, banal, easy. 

“So where were you tonight? Well, last night for you.”

“Uh, just a thing. And then a bar.”

Gee, he never would have guessed that. 

“And that kept you out until almost morning? Must have been a hell of a bar.”

“Eh…” Darren makes a noncommittal noise that melts into one of his easy laughs. “You could always come here and find out for yourself. I am now the Gatekeeper of New York City and have hereby granted my permission.”

He closes his laptop, the screen long gone dark since his phone rang, and starts moving towards his waiting bed. He might as well be comfortable if they’re going to talk about complete nonsense. 

“Well, I’m honored, my liege, but it’s never been your permission that’s kept me away. Besides, why would I mess up this whole late night phone buddies thing that we have going on?”

He can hear the wry smile slip from Darren’s face where he sits three thousand miles away. “That’s it, then? I’m just never going to see your face again?”

“I’d think you had seen more than enough of it. Most people would be sick of me by now.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not.” 

That’s what he was afraid of.

“Dare…”

“I’m not ready to let you just be a voice on the phone and a face in my mind, Chris.”

He can’t let those words mean anything. He can’t let Darren know that they do even if they do. Even if they mean a lot.

“What, we just get together and do the casual friends thing now? Things are a little too complicated for that, don't you think?” 

They had always made shitty friends, since the very start. It was either too much or nothing at all with them, no middle ground. They either gave into greed of wanting it all or ignored the other existed. This year, these calls, it’s the first time he’s ever felt like they had something close to a stable friendship. The distance helped.

In some ways.

“What I think is that I want to see you. At least to make sure the guy I’m seeing inside my head is the real deal. If I have to imagine you here, I want to be able to do it accurately. _Do or do not, there is no-_ ”

“Oh God.” He can’t force back a sudden laugh. "Your Yoda still really sucks.”

“So school me, Colfer. Come _see_ me or let me come out there and see you. We can even make this shit diplomatic, if you want. We’ll meet halfway in the middle of Oklahoma or something. Bet there’s bars there.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

He does. 

_For all the love we've made_  
_Just one thing stays the same_  
_The lamp gets dusty_  
_The pipes get rusty_  
_But I don't want to wash my hands clean_


End file.
